Prince – 1958-2016

Prince’s Purple Rain tour was the first out-of-town concert I was ever allowed to attend. I had spent the night outside the Stockton Tower Records to get my ticket, which was emblazoned with the command “WEAR SOMETHING PURPLE.” So I did, a purple scarf festooned with Prince buttons. The show was at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, and to be quite honest, I don’t remember all that much about the show itself, more the excitement of being there and the buzz in that building when Prince hit the stage. Our seats were pretty far from the stage.

I’ve been a Prince fan for so long now that I honestly don’t even really remember when it happened. It must have been around when 1999 came out and MTV started playing the title song and “Little Red Corvette” into the ground. I can remember being like 14 or so and furtively buying a cassette of Dirty Mind at the Record Factory in those pre-PMRC days when there was no such thing as a Parental Advisory. I also remember being very worried that my parents would hear anything that Prince sang on that album, for fear that I wouldn’t get to buy any more.

Anyway, I was certainly a fan by the time Purple Rain came around, since I remember going to the flick on opening night with my friend Grayland. The theater was absolutely packed, girls screaming every time Prince hit the screen. One wall of my bedroom became a de facto Prince shrine, covered with every poster and magazine cover I could get my hands on. I even had a 5-foot-tall cardboard stand-up of Prince on his motorcycle from the cover of Purple Rain, coerced from a local video store when I bought the flick on VHS.

Thus the trip to San Francisco wearing a purple scarf. I saw Prince several more times over the years, from the Lovesexy tour “in the round” to his recent Forum and Staples Center shows. Every time I saw him, his sheer talent and showmanship blew me away. He’s without a doubt the greatest guitarist I’ve ever seen, tossing off spectacular solos with an effortless grace that made it seem like he could do it all night. He could. He was simultaneously a bandleader, lead singer, lead guitarist, dance machine and ringmaster, and no one’s done it better.

Prince was my window into funk, my introduction to a style of music that would come to consume me for a long time. Before I’d ever really heard much of their music, I read a Rolling Stone article about Prince that said he incorporated elements of James Brown, Parliament and Sly & the Family Stone. So I went out and bought James Brown, Parliament and Sly & the Family Stone albums. To say that they turned my head around would be an understatement. Say it loud, I’m funk and I’m proud, and I really do owe it all to Prince.

And now Prince is dead, which is a surreal and awful thing to actually be writing. He always seemed like one of those cats who’d be playing concerts when he was 90. Like one of those cats who’s supposed to be playing til he’s 90. He never seemed to age! I thought I’d be seeing Prince concerts for the next twenty years. But now he’s dead at the age of 57 and so are Bowie and Phife and I’m sick to my stomach and everything sucks.

So I find myself penning another tribute to a musician I loved and have suddenly lost. I thought I was depressed when Phife Dawg died last month, but this is a whole other level of loss. Prince was my absolute favorite musician for many, many years. His music opened up new worlds, helped me bond with new friends in college, cheered me up when I was down, inspired me, excited me, made me laugh and made me cry. It will continue to do so for as long as I’m kicking around here. But the knowledge that there’s no more music coming, that I’ll never again see Prince live, that that’s all there is, is just too devastating to actually process at the moment. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life–which just got quite a bit darker.